I see -- so you're one of those liberal fucktards who wants to see everyone driving a matchbox car. If only your kind had read the studies which prove that millions of people have died in accidents solely because their cars were so undersized that the driver was virtually unprotected.
There's a reason why, even after the Explorer fiasco, the number-one motivation for SUV purchases is "safety."
And of course there's the fact that you seem to think that because "once I saw an SUV and it hit a car the car was fine and the SUV flipped" that SUVs are inherently dangerous. Read the statistics, asshole. You're like some frigid 40-year-old virgin who was molested as a child and how believes that sex is evil, or like a pansy whose parents were alcoholic and now believes that alcohol is evil. You sound like child. There are many variable elements that control the outcome of an accident, including the speed and weight of the vehicles, the angle of collision, the road condition, the weather, and the drivers' reaction time. Who are you to say that your single eyewitness account is indicative of any trend?
See you on the road, loser. Good luck surviving an accident with a garbage can in your Geo Metro. I only hope that the sacrifice of your worthless life is worth the few gallons of gas that you saved by driving a toy weighing less than you do.
FWIW I drive an Accord. I just hate to see misinformed people who leach off of politically-biased media scare-stories and think they know how the world really works.
Scooters and skateboards are rightfully banned because the rider has no easy way to stop or turn on a dime, while the inline skater can do both. Also, if the skater falls, his vehicle doesn't continue moving of its own will.
I live in the DC suburbs and commute through the city every day. This includes driving on the beltway (~55MPH speed limit, in reality ranging from 10MPH in a traffic jam to 70MPH in light traffic) and city streets (constant stop and go). I drive a car. I'm interested in learning to ride and buying a motorcycle, and I think it'd be a fun way to get to work. Assuming that I don't get myself killed in a traffic accident -- not that motorcycles have a higher chance of being in an accident, but if I am in an accident I have a much smaller chance of surviving (no seatbelts, exposed bodyparts, et cetera) -- I can take advantage of the motorcycle's small size to more efficiently (albeit illegally) circumnavigate stopped traffic. I've also considered bicycling to work, because if I avoid the beltway I could make my commute in about an hour. I enjoy cycling.
But there's a problem that applies to the motorcycle, the bicycle, and the Segway. It's called the environment. Rain, snow, smoggy streets, slush, puddles, et cetera. And the bicycle has its own special problem: it is powered by me. And no matter how slowly I pedal, a half-hour of cycling will cause me to perspire.
I have a corporate job, and can't show up at the office drenched and smelly. Thus the bicycle -- and to some degree the motorcycle and the Segway, if they are the only vehcice you own -- is only a realistic option for daily commute if you have enough spare time and proper facilities for showering after you get to work.
These problems will affect some areas of the country less than others. If I lived in California I would probably much better enjoy riding a Segway to work, because the risk of rain or snow is minimal. I could keep a car for days when it's raining, or I need to take associates out to lunch, et cetera. And if I lived in California and lived within a few miles of my office, biking (without showering) might even be an acceptable option. Just change clothes at work and I'm good to go.
By the way, there's one final problem with cycling on the streets: drivers hate you. I know, I know, it's unfair -- we have just as much a right to be there as they do, supposedly. But we're slow. We cause traffic jams because people have to pass us. We're more difficult to see. And though a cyclist can use the agile nature of his vehicle to more easily avoid accidents -- he can quickly brake, or jump onto a sidewalk -- the cyclist has very little chance of surviving a serious accident.
So I drive a car to work. It's nice. I'm protected from the elements. I can listen to the radio. I can eat a Big Mac and drink a cup of coffee. I can be receive fellatio from your girlfriend. I can pick my nose and wipe it in her hair.
Synopsis: Hmmm, maybe the subject is a bit too "close to home" for some people.
Details: So was it just your Uncle Larry, or did Uncle Dave get you, too? You must have felt so betrayed to learn that they weren't really your uncles at all, but instead your father's homosexual lovers. It must be really tough, not being able to sleep at night unless you bedroom door is closed and locked... and that crack of light under the door is so scary... you'll just lie there, waiting, praying every time the footsteps come down the hall that they don't stop outside your door... no, beee, you don't have issues. You're completely normal. Every man cries whenever he smells sweat and Old Spice. It'll be alight.
Details: Perhaps you got a little nasty with your daddy, so many years ago? Don't project your own problems on the rest of the world. You liked it, too, you dirty little boy. Dirty, filthy little boy! You liked it when daddy loved you!
Synopsis: Wow, now JonKatz won't have to go to prison! (Not that he'd mind the ass-rape, of course.)
Details: Quick, Jon, email Taco and ask him to use The GIMP [for Windows] to filter your entire collection of highly illegal child pornography! (I recommend the "oil painting" filter.) Then, when the authorities come knock-knock-knocking at your door, you can claim that all that kiddie ass is actually modern art! w00t!
...since Malda's mom stripped at my birthday party!
Synopsis: Even talking about OS/2 is a waste of time.
Details: Every penny being spent developing for and supporting such an obsolete turd should instead be spent migrating to a non-mesozoic operating system. You might as well be using DR-DOS, you stupid losers.
Details: You can easily get NIS clients/servers for NT, too.
But, more importantly... what is this crap, UNIX for newbies? Did you even bother to RTFM or search Google before asking this on Slashdot? Oh, wait, I forget -- this is Slashdot, the anti-Microsoft site run by amateur wannabe-developers like Taco, who believe that pirating MP3s on a GNOME workstation constitutes "technical Linux work." Hell, I forgot that most of you are reading Slashdot on Windows -- or Red Hat, or Mandrake, same difference -- boxes while pretending to be "l337 h4X0rs."
Let me translate your question into Maldaish so that more of this site's readers can understand it: "wow d00d how do i get the p4ssw0rdz beetween b0Xors. i m l337 and use lunix lol windoze is lame m$ is a monopoly lolol@!@! plz help thx." Now I'll reply in kind: "hey u r a n00b wtf r u axing this stuff 4. may-b u shood go watch nekkid seX0r cart00ns w/malda and pretend 2 B k3wl. lol u r lame@!@!@!!! like teh taxo!!@!"
But hopefully, this marks a new era of Apache, well, not sucking as hard as Rob sucks Jeff's cock. Remember, kids, use Apache! Because it's fast^H^H^H^Hstable^H^H^H^H^H^Hfull-featured^H^H^H^ H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfree!
Given what we know about life "in the navy," I don't think you should talk too much about the quartermaster's "grease pencil," which is only good for determining location within the men's shower facilities.
Synopsis: When it comes to 3D graphics performance, I think Anand lal Shimpi said it best.
Details: As Ms. lal Shimpi is often quoted as saying, "Graphics cards are cool, but no where near as important as my sacred Muslim duty to kill American children. I hope that all Americans buy AMD processors, which have a well-known habit of turning into bombs if the user's heatsink fails. If enough Americans buy inferior AMD CPUs, then, hopefully, American children will die. I simply love drinking the blood of innocent whites, as all Muslims do. Remember: Intel, and Tom's Hardware, are the enemies. Praise be to Allah!"
Synopsis: CmdrTaco can see the end of his short career, careening down the Tunnel of Life like a Freight Train of Reality.
Details: I thought that our favorite hypocrite liked to make fun of Apple! Why the change of heart, buddy? You finally realized how stupid you look when you diss Windows and then rant about Windows-only games, so you've decided to pretend to be a Mac user to save face? Or is it that you've realized how little time you have left on the Web, and you're trying to diversify? (In the event that Linux zealotry stops being profitable^Winteresting^Wa good way to kill time between pretending to be an anime expert and playing Diablo II, you can always post links for another ignorant computing subculture!) Nice shiny Aqua theme, guys. This site gets uglier and filled with more ads with every passing day, but the revenue just keep dropping. Man, OSDN is fucked. Fucked! Just like VA Software!
You poor, poor little boy. You truly have drunk the purple kool-aid, and I'm going to have to add you to the list of people who will die in my Really Final Solution. The only thing you can do is shut... your big, stupid mouth... right now. Step away from the keyboard, and jump off the building like a WTC roofdiver. Splat on the ground like Mohammed's intestines as the US slices his stomach open with the Christian sword of justice. You are a communist. You are a terrorist. Open Source is lame. You are lame. FreeBSD is dying. You are already dead. Your only consolation is that we took the time notice your ignorance. You shall be crushed. Like a bug, only less aware of his true environment like a bug. What is the Matrix? Will you take the blue pill, or the red pill? Take the red pill, and you'll get drowsy. Take the blue pill, and you're in for a tasty treat. The red pill is a Tylenol and the blue pill is a Skittle. Yes, I'm fucking with you. Close your eyes bend over and open wide you're in for a big surprise IN YOUR ASS. I love you. I hate you. Please shut up. Please stop using your Slashdot account. Change your password to something random and format your fucking Linux partition away. Turn on, tune out. This is the way.
I'm going to be serious for a moment. You're exactly the kind of moron who makes me afraid to mention that yes, I have a GNU/Linux box, in public. You aren't helping anything, or anyone. You aren't cool. I know you because I used to be you. Grow up. Please. I hope that once Slashdot shuts down that people like you give up.
Just because you're afraid of understanding how something works doesn't mean you have to piss on the rest of us. And remind me again of why Mac OS is suitable as an enterprise development platform? Oh, that's right, it isn't. If Mac OS had half of the functionality under the hood that Windows did, maybe things would be different, but Apple developers can't even create a stable OS when they control the hardware platform as well as the OS!
Have fun in your little gumdrop world with toddlers and technophobe graphic designers; the rest of us will be making the world go round. Thanks!
Let me follow up my victorious post by mentioning that the performance gain is due to much more than CPU utilization. You obviously have no idea about the factors involved in building a multitier web application. But, you're an amateur, so you can be forgiven. You can go on thinking that a Linux box with Perl is just as good, since you'll never have any impact on the industry. Terrorist scum.
And regarding your comment re: Perl and Java, it's obvious that you've never practiced what you preach. I've done web services in Perl, Java, and C++, using both Apache's and Microsoft's XML libraries and models. And.NET blows them all away. You sound like some sort of "armchair developer," like Malda.
Details: "BSD" has existed for almost twenty years. Today's BSD software -- BSDi, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Mac OS X -- are derived from 4.4BSD-lite, the last public release from Berkeley CSRG. What is CSRG, you ask? Well, UNIX was originally developed at Bell Labs (AT&T), and AT&T released the source (sound familiar?) to academic and research institutions in the late seventies/early eighties. These groups did a lot to improve UNIX, but none did more than the Computer Systems Research Group ar Berkeley. They created the primary non-AT&T variant of UNIX, called BSD (Berkeley System Distribution). BSD played a huge part in the early years of the Web -- DARPA, the government agency whose ARPAnet was the precursor of the WWW, contracted CSRG to add TCP/IP support to BSD. BSD was the first OS to have integrated TCP/IP, actually -- it was the original Internet platform. BSD had a good number of other innovations as well, and the CSRG freaks added many loved/hated things to UNIX culture (such as Bill Joy's C shell and vi), but none is as significant IMNSHO as TCP/IP.
The CSRG was winding down in the late eighties, after DARPA funding dried up. They were going to call it quits, and decided to release the BSD source to the public. Well, there was still some AT&T code in there, so AT&T had a hissy fit and sued. Bottom line: CSRG removed the AT&T code., and "4.4BSD-lite" was released in 1994 IIRC, and it was that same year (IIRC) that Free- and NetBSD started becoming popular. This is 2002, so it is very possible that the poster has been using FreeBSD for eight years, and if he's referring to BSD as an OS family, it's quite obvious that he could have been using it for eight years.
Just because you're a clueless newbie doesn't mean that everyone else is!
Continuing my history of BSD... OpenBSD is a fork of NetBSD, created when Theo the Rat^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hde Raadt became enraged when fellow NetBSD developers would not give him the title of "Grand NetBSD Master of the World" and allow him to appear naked on the cover of NetBSD CDs. OpenBSD claims to be ultra-secure because Theo has personally read every line of code, but in truth it's really sort of amateurish and its "amazing" history of few exploits is due to the fact that its userbase is like five people, including Theo's dead mother and his dog Farmer, whom he has hot dog sex with.
BSDi, a company whose board included several original CSRG members, produced a 4.4BSD-based OS called BSD/OS (creative, eh?). This OS was used by many ISPs and webhosts, but the company is gone now. BSDi had bought Walnut Creek, FreeBSD's primary supporter and distributor, last year, but BSDi is now owned by Wind River, a small loser company that doesn't seem to know what the fuck to do with BSD/OS. (They don't even put their prices on the website. I emailed and asked. I was returned a Word document with a price list. A Word document! I mean, sure I use NT as my primary workstation platform, but they're not going to sell anything to the BSD nazis by writing a price list in MS Word!) I'm honestly not sure what the status or future of FreeBSD is at this point, but going to FreeBSDMall.com and buying some daemon crap certainly won't hurt.
SunOS, the kernel of what is today called "Solaris," was once BSD. Many choose to exclude this from their histories, but you cannot change the fact that SunOS was once the most popular BSD OS. (You do know that famed BSD hacker and possibly homosexual Bill Joy is Sun's Chief Scientist, right?) In a controversial move, Sun moved to a Sys V kernel in the late eighties, to help show solidarity with AT&T's goals of standardizing the many UNIX variants. AT&T soon stopped caring, and ownership of UNIX moved from Bell to Novell and then to SCO (just about bankrupt, eh?).
Today, UNIX branding is controlled by the Open Group, the official publisher of the UNIX specs and certifier of UNIX operating systems. It's because GNU/Linux doesn't pass the OG's tests that it cannot be called real UNIX. Real UNIX operating systems include Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, Tru64/Digital, and UnixWare. Notice anything missing? That's right, BSD is not a real UNIX! UNIX specifies a SysV system, and since BSD-lite doesn't include any original AT&T code, no modern BSD has any ties to real UNIX. Nevertheless, this is a very hazy area from a legal standpoint, so the OG seems to have no problem in letting BSD users call their systems "UNIX." (Note the absence of any trademark/copyright marks.)
But back to BSD! The only other BSD system worth mentioning is Mac OS X. Mac OS X is really sort of a bastard, having a lot of fucked up Apple and Mach shit mixed in with its FreeBSD roots. System-level development is different than normal BSD system development. However, because it's similar from a userland perspective, you can call it Unix, I guess. If Apple is to be believed, Mac OS X has made "Unix" a major player in the desktop market. (And if you want to really think about that, and all of the Microsoft software that runs natively on OS X, it will weird you out!)
Today, *BSD truly is dying. I'm sorry, but it is. The market is fueled by business users' money, and business users often require specific applications, applications which only NT, UNIX, and GNU/Linux can provide. BSD will remain a nice platform to run Apache, but you're not going to see FreeBSD be a targey platform for many business projects. (Note: Sony Japan runs their website on FreeBSD, but that case can be safely ignored because they're crazy Japanese and can be counted on to rice-up even the best of computer systems.) FreeBSD developes have noticed this, and most have chosen to spend their time working on GNU/Linux -- which, while equally lame, at least looks better on a resume than BSD. (PHB: "FreeBSD? What's that? Oh, you've used Linux too! I read about that last year in PHB Monthly, the PHB's guide to buzzwords and trends!")
I hope that this post has been Interesting and Informative (hint, hint).
Details: Microsoft uses FreeBSD for parts of Hotmail because the folks from whom they aquired the original software were Unix-wannabe hippies. It doesn't necessarily pay to needlessly port software that works, so Microsoft left the original b0X0rs intact, expanding the software only enough so that they and the new Windows 2000 boxes would be able to work together seemlessly. The FreeBSD boxes -- of which there are still many, since Hotmail wasn't a small service even before Microsoft bought it -- are replaced with Windows boxes as load and need warrant.
And it isn't Microsoft's fault at the original developers were BSD losers.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a reason why, even after the Explorer fiasco, the number-one motivation for SUV purchases is "safety."
And of course there's the fact that you seem to think that because "once I saw an SUV and it hit a car the car was fine and the SUV flipped" that SUVs are inherently dangerous. Read the statistics, asshole. You're like some frigid 40-year-old virgin who was molested as a child and how believes that sex is evil, or like a pansy whose parents were alcoholic and now believes that alcohol is evil. You sound like child. There are many variable elements that control the outcome of an accident, including the speed and weight of the vehicles, the angle of collision, the road condition, the weather, and the drivers' reaction time. Who are you to say that your single eyewitness account is indicative of any trend?
See you on the road, loser. Good luck surviving an accident with a garbage can in your Geo Metro. I only hope that the sacrifice of your worthless life is worth the few gallons of gas that you saved by driving a toy weighing less than you do.
FWIW I drive an Accord. I just hate to see misinformed people who leach off of politically-biased media scare-stories and think they know how the world really works.
Scooters and skateboards are rightfully banned because the rider has no easy way to stop or turn on a dime, while the inline skater can do both. Also, if the skater falls, his vehicle doesn't continue moving of its own will.
I live in the DC suburbs and commute through the city every day. This includes driving on the beltway (~55MPH speed limit, in reality ranging from 10MPH in a traffic jam to 70MPH in light traffic) and city streets (constant stop and go). I drive a car. I'm interested in learning to ride and buying a motorcycle, and I think it'd be a fun way to get to work. Assuming that I don't get myself killed in a traffic accident -- not that motorcycles have a higher chance of being in an accident, but if I am in an accident I have a much smaller chance of surviving (no seatbelts, exposed bodyparts, et cetera) -- I can take advantage of the motorcycle's small size to more efficiently (albeit illegally) circumnavigate stopped traffic. I've also considered bicycling to work, because if I avoid the beltway I could make my commute in about an hour. I enjoy cycling.
But there's a problem that applies to the motorcycle, the bicycle, and the Segway. It's called the environment. Rain, snow, smoggy streets, slush, puddles, et cetera. And the bicycle has its own special problem: it is powered by me. And no matter how slowly I pedal, a half-hour of cycling will cause me to perspire.
I have a corporate job, and can't show up at the office drenched and smelly. Thus the bicycle -- and to some degree the motorcycle and the Segway, if they are the only vehcice you own -- is only a realistic option for daily commute if you have enough spare time and proper facilities for showering after you get to work.
These problems will affect some areas of the country less than others. If I lived in California I would probably much better enjoy riding a Segway to work, because the risk of rain or snow is minimal. I could keep a car for days when it's raining, or I need to take associates out to lunch, et cetera. And if I lived in California and lived within a few miles of my office, biking (without showering) might even be an acceptable option. Just change clothes at work and I'm good to go.
By the way, there's one final problem with cycling on the streets: drivers hate you. I know, I know, it's unfair -- we have just as much a right to be there as they do, supposedly. But we're slow. We cause traffic jams because people have to pass us. We're more difficult to see. And though a cyclist can use the agile nature of his vehicle to more easily avoid accidents -- he can quickly brake, or jump onto a sidewalk -- the cyclist has very little chance of surviving a serious accident.
So I drive a car to work. It's nice. I'm protected from the elements. I can listen to the radio. I can eat a Big Mac and drink a cup of coffee. I can be receive fellatio from your girlfriend. I can pick my nose and wipe it in her hair.
Such are the wonders of the automobile.
Get off the road, you two-wheeled freak!
Watch out, though, the slut may try to marry you. Yowza!
Details: Oh, wait, nevermind -- I thought you said chubby 30-year-olds with crows' feet, pigtails, teddy bears, and lollypops. My bad.
Details: So was it just your Uncle Larry, or did Uncle Dave get you, too? You must have felt so betrayed to learn that they weren't really your uncles at all, but instead your father's homosexual lovers. It must be really tough, not being able to sleep at night unless you bedroom door is closed and locked... and that crack of light under the door is so scary... you'll just lie there, waiting, praying every time the footsteps come down the hall that they don't stop outside your door... no, beee, you don't have issues. You're completely normal. Every man cries whenever he smells sweat and Old Spice. It'll be alight.
Ha ha, you were molested!
Details: Perhaps you got a little nasty with your daddy, so many years ago? Don't project your own problems on the rest of the world. You liked it, too, you dirty little boy. Dirty, filthy little boy! You liked it when daddy loved you!
Details: Quick, Jon, email Taco and ask him to use The GIMP [for Windows] to filter your entire collection of highly illegal child pornography! (I recommend the "oil painting" filter.) Then, when the authorities come knock-knock-knocking at your door, you can claim that all that kiddie ass is actually modern art! w00t!
This is certainly good news for Slashdot! JonKatz can return to posting his lame attempts at writing and bragging about his dog-fucking atrocities.
Details: I mean, it's almost gay and backwards as Kentucky. Or, God forbid, Michigan. I shudder at the mere thought.
Details: And maybe the first (!!), but I'm not going to get my hopes up.
Oh, and JonKatz is a child molester.
Synopsis: Even talking about OS/2 is a waste of time.
Details: Every penny being spent developing for and supporting such an obsolete turd should instead be spent migrating to a non-mesozoic operating system. You might as well be using DR-DOS, you stupid losers.
Hey, you newbie luser bitch, if you be a good little dog I'll let you suck on my flesh tampon after I take it out of your ass.
Details: You can easily get NIS clients/servers for NT, too.
But, more importantly... what is this crap, UNIX for newbies? Did you even bother to RTFM or search Google before asking this on Slashdot? Oh, wait, I forget -- this is Slashdot, the anti-Microsoft site run by amateur wannabe-developers like Taco, who believe that pirating MP3s on a GNOME workstation constitutes "technical Linux work." Hell, I forgot that most of you are reading Slashdot on Windows -- or Red Hat, or Mandrake, same difference -- boxes while pretending to be "l337 h4X0rs."
Let me translate your question into Maldaish so that more of this site's readers can understand it: "wow d00d how do i get the p4ssw0rdz beetween b0Xors. i m l337 and use lunix lol windoze is lame m$ is a monopoly lolol@!@! plz help thx." Now I'll reply in kind: "hey u r a n00b wtf r u axing this stuff 4. may-b u shood go watch nekkid seX0r cart00ns w/malda and pretend 2 B k3wl. lol u r lame@!@!@!!! like teh taxo!!@!"
But hopefully, this marks a new era of Apache, well, not sucking as hard as Rob sucks Jeff's cock. Remember, kids, use Apache! Because it's fast^H^H^H^Hstable^H^H^H^H^H^Hfull-featured^H^H^H^ H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfree!
Given what we know about life "in the navy," I don't think you should talk too much about the quartermaster's "grease pencil," which is only good for determining location within the men's shower facilities.
Details: As Ms. lal Shimpi is often quoted as saying, "Graphics cards are cool, but no where near as important as my sacred Muslim duty to kill American children. I hope that all Americans buy AMD processors, which have a well-known habit of turning into bombs if the user's heatsink fails. If enough Americans buy inferior AMD CPUs, then, hopefully, American children will die. I simply love drinking the blood of innocent whites, as all Muslims do. Remember: Intel, and Tom's Hardware, are the enemies. Praise be to Allah!"
Yes, that Anandtech sure is insightful!
Details: I thought that our favorite hypocrite liked to make fun of Apple! Why the change of heart, buddy? You finally realized how stupid you look when you diss Windows and then rant about Windows-only games, so you've decided to pretend to be a Mac user to save face? Or is it that you've realized how little time you have left on the Web, and you're trying to diversify? (In the event that Linux zealotry stops being profitable^Winteresting^Wa good way to kill time between pretending to be an anime expert and playing Diablo II, you can always post links for another ignorant computing subculture!) Nice shiny Aqua theme, guys. This site gets uglier and filled with more ads with every passing day, but the revenue just keep dropping. Man, OSDN is fucked. Fucked! Just like VA Software!
This.
This is the way.
I'm going to be serious for a moment. You're exactly the kind of moron who makes me afraid to mention that yes, I have a GNU/Linux box, in public. You aren't helping anything, or anyone. You aren't cool. I know you because I used to be you. Grow up. Please. I hope that once Slashdot shuts down that people like you give up.
Have fun in your little gumdrop world with toddlers and technophobe graphic designers; the rest of us will be making the world go round. Thanks!
Let me follow up my victorious post by mentioning that the performance gain is due to much more than CPU utilization. You obviously have no idea about the factors involved in building a multitier web application. But, you're an amateur, so you can be forgiven. You can go on thinking that a Linux box with Perl is just as good, since you'll never have any impact on the industry. Terrorist scum.
And regarding your comment re: Perl and Java, it's obvious that you've never practiced what you preach. I've done web services in Perl, Java, and C++, using both Apache's and Microsoft's XML libraries and models. And .NET blows them all away. You sound like some sort of "armchair developer," like Malda.
Details: "BSD" has existed for almost twenty years. Today's BSD software -- BSDi, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Mac OS X -- are derived from 4.4BSD-lite, the last public release from Berkeley CSRG. What is CSRG, you ask? Well, UNIX was originally developed at Bell Labs (AT&T), and AT&T released the source (sound familiar?) to academic and research institutions in the late seventies/early eighties. These groups did a lot to improve UNIX, but none did more than the Computer Systems Research Group ar Berkeley. They created the primary non-AT&T variant of UNIX, called BSD (Berkeley System Distribution). BSD played a huge part in the early years of the Web -- DARPA, the government agency whose ARPAnet was the precursor of the WWW, contracted CSRG to add TCP/IP support to BSD. BSD was the first OS to have integrated TCP/IP, actually -- it was the original Internet platform. BSD had a good number of other innovations as well, and the CSRG freaks added many loved/hated things to UNIX culture (such as Bill Joy's C shell and vi), but none is as significant IMNSHO as TCP/IP.
The CSRG was winding down in the late eighties, after DARPA funding dried up. They were going to call it quits, and decided to release the BSD source to the public. Well, there was still some AT&T code in there, so AT&T had a hissy fit and sued. Bottom line: CSRG removed the AT&T code., and "4.4BSD-lite" was released in 1994 IIRC, and it was that same year (IIRC) that Free- and NetBSD started becoming popular. This is 2002, so it is very possible that the poster has been using FreeBSD for eight years, and if he's referring to BSD as an OS family, it's quite obvious that he could have been using it for eight years.
Just because you're a clueless newbie doesn't mean that everyone else is!
Continuing my history of BSD... OpenBSD is a fork of NetBSD, created when Theo the Rat^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hde Raadt became enraged when fellow NetBSD developers would not give him the title of "Grand NetBSD Master of the World" and allow him to appear naked on the cover of NetBSD CDs. OpenBSD claims to be ultra-secure because Theo has personally read every line of code, but in truth it's really sort of amateurish and its "amazing" history of few exploits is due to the fact that its userbase is like five people, including Theo's dead mother and his dog Farmer, whom he has hot dog sex with.
BSDi, a company whose board included several original CSRG members, produced a 4.4BSD-based OS called BSD/OS (creative, eh?). This OS was used by many ISPs and webhosts, but the company is gone now. BSDi had bought Walnut Creek, FreeBSD's primary supporter and distributor, last year, but BSDi is now owned by Wind River, a small loser company that doesn't seem to know what the fuck to do with BSD/OS. (They don't even put their prices on the website. I emailed and asked. I was returned a Word document with a price list. A Word document! I mean, sure I use NT as my primary workstation platform, but they're not going to sell anything to the BSD nazis by writing a price list in MS Word!) I'm honestly not sure what the status or future of FreeBSD is at this point, but going to FreeBSDMall.com and buying some daemon crap certainly won't hurt.
SunOS, the kernel of what is today called "Solaris," was once BSD. Many choose to exclude this from their histories, but you cannot change the fact that SunOS was once the most popular BSD OS. (You do know that famed BSD hacker and possibly homosexual Bill Joy is Sun's Chief Scientist, right?) In a controversial move, Sun moved to a Sys V kernel in the late eighties, to help show solidarity with AT&T's goals of standardizing the many UNIX variants. AT&T soon stopped caring, and ownership of UNIX moved from Bell to Novell and then to SCO (just about bankrupt, eh?).
Today, UNIX branding is controlled by the Open Group, the official publisher of the UNIX specs and certifier of UNIX operating systems. It's because GNU/Linux doesn't pass the OG's tests that it cannot be called real UNIX. Real UNIX operating systems include Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, Tru64/Digital, and UnixWare. Notice anything missing? That's right, BSD is not a real UNIX! UNIX specifies a SysV system, and since BSD-lite doesn't include any original AT&T code, no modern BSD has any ties to real UNIX. Nevertheless, this is a very hazy area from a legal standpoint, so the OG seems to have no problem in letting BSD users call their systems "UNIX." (Note the absence of any trademark/copyright marks.)
But back to BSD! The only other BSD system worth mentioning is Mac OS X. Mac OS X is really sort of a bastard, having a lot of fucked up Apple and Mach shit mixed in with its FreeBSD roots. System-level development is different than normal BSD system development. However, because it's similar from a userland perspective, you can call it Unix, I guess. If Apple is to be believed, Mac OS X has made "Unix" a major player in the desktop market. (And if you want to really think about that, and all of the Microsoft software that runs natively on OS X, it will weird you out!)
Today, *BSD truly is dying. I'm sorry, but it is. The market is fueled by business users' money, and business users often require specific applications, applications which only NT, UNIX, and GNU/Linux can provide. BSD will remain a nice platform to run Apache, but you're not going to see FreeBSD be a targey platform for many business projects. (Note: Sony Japan runs their website on FreeBSD, but that case can be safely ignored because they're crazy Japanese and can be counted on to rice-up even the best of computer systems.) FreeBSD developes have noticed this, and most have chosen to spend their time working on GNU/Linux -- which, while equally lame, at least looks better on a resume than BSD. (PHB: "FreeBSD? What's that? Oh, you've used Linux too! I read about that last year in PHB Monthly, the PHB's guide to buzzwords and trends!")
I hope that this post has been Interesting and Informative (hint, hint).
Details: Microsoft uses FreeBSD for parts of Hotmail because the folks from whom they aquired the original software were Unix-wannabe hippies. It doesn't necessarily pay to needlessly port software that works, so Microsoft left the original b0X0rs intact, expanding the software only enough so that they and the new Windows 2000 boxes would be able to work together seemlessly. The FreeBSD boxes -- of which there are still many, since Hotmail wasn't a small service even before Microsoft bought it -- are replaced with Windows boxes as load and need warrant.
And it isn't Microsoft's fault at the original developers were BSD losers.
Details: Please kill yourself, ASAP. HTH!